1. Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of communications, and more particularly, to communications in a cellular communication system.
2. Background
In code division multiple access (CDMA) communication systems, unnecessary and excessive transmission by a user may cause interference for other users in addition to reducing the system capacity. The communication system may provide communication services that include wireless radio transmission of digitized speech, still or moving images, text messages and other types of data. An encoder in a transmitter of the communication system may receiver a packet of data for encoding. The encoding operation produces more data symbols than received. The encoded data may be divided into several data units. Each data unit may be transmitted in a time slot. Since the data packet is encoded, it is possible to decode the entire data packet from one or more data units without actually receiving all the data units. After receiving each data unit, the receiving destination may make a positive or negative acknowledgement of decoding the entire data packet. If the entire data packet is decoded successfully before actually receiving all the data units associated with the data packet, the transmitter should receive a positive acknowledgment to stop transmitting the remainder of the data units. Since the data packet is already properly decoded at the receiver, the communication resources are wasted if the remainder number of the data unites are transmitted.
To this end as well as others, there is a need for a method and apparatus for acknowledging reception of a data packet in a communication system.